Grande Prairie City Council has directed Mayor Jackie Clayton to write a letter of support indicating the city’s desire to back the Alberta Forest Products Association in its efforts to push against American tariffs on Canadian lumber.
The letter will include a number of items, including advocating for Alberta wood products south of the border and building with domestic lumber in new developments.
Woodworks Alberta Executive Director Rory Koska appeared before city council during their recent Monday night meeting as part of a several-stop tour between municipalities, urging councils to support the AFPA in its efforts. He says he is “very pleased” to have the city on board, especially after the county indicated its support earlier that day.
“Very pleased and excited to have another municipality support building with wood, and helping the forest community create more jobs and more lumber, and get it to places that its needed,” he says.
The threat of tariffs on Canadian exports to the US has been quite the discussion point among stakeholders in Grande Prairie, given the region’s dependence on lumber. Koska says right now, there is a “very high” level of concern among leaders in the forest industry, which has unfortunately resulted in some projects slowing down, being paused, or even scrapped altogether.
“Very very high [concern] with duties and tariffs, to the point where they’re scared for their business and scared for their communities,” he says. “I’m generally dealing with developers, builders, and specifiers, and everybody right now is putting everything on hold, they’re waiting to see what’s going to happen, and waiting to see what the prices are before they pull the trigger on any new projects going forward.”
“Some developers are okay to buy something once they understand what’s happening, maybe they have that one-month reprieve, they’ll move forward a little bit then wait, move forward, and then wait.”
Koska argues that there is a solution; however. He says cleaning up the supply chain and focusing on utilizing Canada’s abundance of natural resources could be the chance to get developments underway, despite the threats coming from its southern neighbours.
“In Canada, we produce a lot of lumber, and we produce a lot of engineered wood product that we can source from home, so any new projects going on, we can source that material locally, in Alberta, if not in Alberta, within Canada, so we can get away without having to pay any type of tariffs that are coming up from the US.”
County Council joined the city during their own meeting- directing county administration to provide a letter of support to the AFPA, similar to Mayor Clayton’s.
